Ready To Charge: Foresight Mobile Edition 1.0

With the release of its Mobile Edition 1.0, Linux distribution Foresight has joined the race to dominate the netbook market.

This first release utilizes the Ubuntu netbook remix desktop, Conary packet management from Rpath and according to developers, has been tested on the EEE-PC from Asus and Intel's Classmate computers. The mobile distribution is based on Foresight Linux 2.0 with a Gnome 2.22 desktop enabling the use of quite a few Gnome applications like F- Spot, Pidgin and the Gnome Movie Player. Music is provided by Banshee and the browser is from Firefox.

Foresight hit the headlines when hardware producers Shuttle decided to bring its KPC computer (the small dice-shaped Barebones) together with Foresight onto the US market. In Europe it was distributed with Suse Linux as operating system.

Former CTO of Red Hat, Eric Troan, worked on the distribution, together with Rpath developers Michael K. Johnson and Matt Wilson. Whoever wants to test the Mobile Edition 1.0 can find the relevant ISO's on the Foresight webpage.

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Comments

Credit Where Credit Is Due

Michael K. Johnson

While Erik, Matt, and I certainly have done plenty of work on core technology (Conary, rBuilder, and so forth) that is used to build and manage all flavors of Foresight Linux, the real credit for Foresight Mobile Edition goes to Ken VanDine and António Meireles, who both spent long hours tuning Foresight Linux for use on netbooks and other small systems. Kudos to both of them, and thanks!